“If anything has become evident in the first three volumes of the Black Wings series,” editor S. T. Joshi tells us in his Introduction to Black Wings IV, “it is that the Lovecraftian idiom is endlessly malleable, and suited to a variety of genres and subgenres. H. P. Lovecraft, although a strong proponent of what he called ‘weird fiction,’ himself spanned a surprisingly wide spectrum of genres in his own brief career, starting out as a writer of relatively conventional tales of the macabre and gradually expanding his scope to embrace the literature of cosmicism—a distinctive fusion of science fiction and horror that has become his signature contribution to the field. Today, we can find Lovecraftian elements in stories ranging from hard-boiled crime to pure fantasy, and this volume displays the extent to which motifs, themes, and imagery from Lovecraft’s tales can infiltrate tales that would otherwise have little relationship to one another.”

“If anything has become evident in the first three volumes of the Black Wings series,” editor S. T. Joshi tells us in his Introduction to Black Wings IV, “it is that the Lovecraftian idiom is endlessly malleable, and suited to a variety of genres and subgenres. H. P. Lovecraft, although a strong proponent of what he called ‘weird fiction,’ himself spanned a surprisingly wide spectrum of genres in his own brief career, starting out as a writer of relatively conventional tales of the macabre and gradually expanding his scope to embrace the literature of cosmicism—a distinctive fusion of science fiction and horror that has become his signature contribution to the field. Today, we can find Lovecraftian elements in stories ranging from hard-boiled crime to pure fantasy, and this volume displays the extent to which motifs, themes, and imagery from Lovecraft’s tales can infiltrate tales that would otherwise have little relationship to one another.”

S. T. JOSHI is the author of The Weird Tale (University of Texas Press, 1990), The Modern Weird Tale (McFarland, 2001), and other critical and biographical studies. His award-winning biography, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (Necronomicon Press, 1996), has been expanded and updated as I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (Hippocampus Press, 2010).

Joshi has edited Lovecraft’s stories, essays, letters, and revisions, as well as works by Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, and other writers. His two-volume treatise, Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction (PS Publishing, 2012), has won a World Fantasy Award.

Limited: 300 numbered hardcovers signed by all contributors, in slipcaseTrade: Unsigned hardcover, in dust jacket